


Invisible Strings

by RogueTiger



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant til 404, F/F, Rosita POV, other characters are background - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RogueTiger/pseuds/RogueTiger
Summary: Following some events from Rosita's past and possible future.AKAI really want Rosita to have a redemption arc.
Relationships: Rosita Bustillos/Kevin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	Invisible Strings

**Author's Note:**

> AN - I have always wanted Rosita to come back to the show and hope she still will one day. I have never felt the urge to dip into her story myself though... until last night when this idea grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. As it was so quick though I apologise for the roughness of it. I have no beta and I'm too impatient to do more than a quick proofread (naughty author) when I know that the next 3-4 days are going to be taken up by anxiety and shock with 4x05.

No matter how many years passed, Rosita knew she would never get used to the bitter cold that clung to the Ghost River Triangle in the long winter months. But. No matter how cold it got, it could never quite chase away the fear of the fires of hell that awaited her for the sin of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She was no saint, Rosita was not fool enough to believe that but, what awaited her, the endless loops of the curse upon the Earps that bound her to them and the land, it was all a mistake. A foolish decision to shack up with her then beau’s best friend after a disastrous second date that had led to her death.

Rosita could still see the events that had led up to it. The pounding of feet upon the treads of the wooden stairs leading to the small room she rented on the second floor above the hardware store in a dirt-water town in the middle of nowhere, Texas had made her turn on her stool, her hands dropping to the surface of the dresser from the cheeks she had been pinching some colour into, just as the door had burst open behind her and he had thrown himself inside.

His eyes were wide and filled with fear. His pistol was cocked and drawn, shaking in his hand as he backed away from the door he had slammed behind him. He grabbed her wrist, his fingers biting into her flesh as he yanked her from her stool and pulled her in front of him. The door burst open once more with a splintering crack that was drowned out by the crack of gunfire right next to her ear and the sound of even more gunshots that filled the room in response.

Rosita’s fingers ghosted over her abdomen, travelling up and finding the edge of the scar the curve of her left breast hid from all but her closest, most intimate, ‘friends’.

She had never even felt it when the bullet had flown from Wyatt Earp’s gun had struck her, puncturing her heart in a way that not even modern medicine could have fixed.

All she could remember was Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday looking down at her with only a mild hint of remorse in their eyes and then she had awoken in Purgatory, her body sizzling and seizing in the snow beneath her body as though she’d been on fire.

The knowledge of what she had become, what had befallen her and the other seventy-six men and women murdered by Wyatt Earp, were already there in her head for her to draw upon, planted there by some unseen force she now knew to be the ones that had put the curse upon them, Bulshar Clootie and his wives. Their deaths cut short, their futures tied to the Earps because Wyatt had killed his demon sons and stopped him from finding a garden.

 _The_ garden.

Growing up, Rosita had heard all about the Garden of Eden at the feet of her parents. Their voices still haunted her along with the scent that had clung to the very fabric of the bible they had clung to and revered above everything. She just couldn’t quite understand why anyone would think a way to a garden would be anywhere in Canada?

But, there were a lot of things she had known growing up that just weren’t true. The main one being that life just wasn’t fair.

One moment making the wrong decision.

One night with the wrong man.

It had led to her becoming a demon. A Revenant as Wyatt’s kin had named them. Doomed to live forever as long as they didn’t fall afoul of Wyatt Earp’s gun. Their existence cursed until either all seventy-seven of them were dead or until there were no more Earps to turn twenty-seven and take up the mantle of Heir.

Some of her kind had lost themselves in the past, stagnating in who they had been and what they had done. Their deaths had come at Wyatt’s hand and they couldn’t let that go.

Rosita…

Her body was stuck in place, anchored to the Ghost River Triangle just as surely as her heritage had trapped her when she was alive, dooming her to the life as a wife, a cleaner or servant for someone richer, or as many women trying to strike out for themselves in that new world, as entertainment. Rosita had always wanted more for herself and, while her body was trapped, her mind was free to take advantage of the new times that lay before her until she had a PhD in Biochemistry and Engineering as well as an online certification in Astrology under her belt.

Which probably made her the most over-qualified mixologist in the world.

With a wry smile quirking her lips, Rosita took a step forward, her foot carefully finding the indent left there previously by either Wynonna Earp or Doc Holliday.

A Earp and a Holliday.

If she was cursed simply by being in the wrong place, they were even more entwined and fated, destined to be together in one form or another.

The sheer size of the Ghost River Triangle had helped Rosita to keep ahead of the Earps, even Edwin who had come closer than any of them to ending the curse. And then Doc Holliday had managed to crawl out of his well and had come knocking on her door. Overnight, Rosita had gone from being relatively safe to living and working right in the middle of the people most invested in ending her existence.

And, cursed once more, Rosita had actually liked them. Even Wynonna who had probably wanted to kill her for sleeping with Doc even before she had found out what she was and had threatened her to garner her help for Nicole.

“I’ll kill you last.”

An offer made as though the Heir was doing her a favour. I’ll kill you last and doom you to an eternity of hell. The same hell that just spending brief moments in was enough to erode the minds of the Revenants sent there.

Rosita had helped Nicole. Wynonna hadn’t _needed_ to make a threat as she liked the Deputy too much but, she knew her time was running out. The Heir and her friends knew her. The Revenants knew she had helped them.

All of them hated her.

All of them wanted her dead.

Sighing through the memories, Rosita looked up, her eyes following the path of the stone steps she had glimpsed to the doorway that was no longer there. Following the exact same path, she had seen Doc take to follow Waverly.

Waverly.

Above all of them, it was Waverly that Rosita had come to like the most. She had accepted her readily as her sisters rival in love and also as a Revenant after she had revealed her true nature to save her from that creep, Tucker Gardner. It would have been better, for her, to let Waverly die and go into hiding once more but she had stuck her neck out for her friend.

A friend she had last seen face to face with Peacemaker between them after she had tried to steal Wynonna’s baby.

It was something she had regretted every moment since even though she had felt like she had been backed into a corner into doing by the Earps, the Revenants, and the threat of Bulshar.

It had kept her living on the edges more and more. Trying to stay at least ten steps away from her old friends and her own kind. Watching as they had suffered through sending Wynonna’s baby away and then Dolls’ death.

When she could, when it was safe, she had laid breadcrumbs for them to follow but the nearest she had come to fighting at their side had been at the Revenant run bar, _The_ _Drowsy Bear Roadhouse_ when she had knocked out some of the Revenants before they could chase after Wynonna and an obviously drunk as a skunk Nicole, and then just hours before when she had given unasked for sniper cover and taken out as many of Bulshar’s beekeepers as she could.

They were gone now though. Beekeepers and Revenants both.

Rosita wasn’t sure what had happened to them but she had felt it as she had been following Wynonna and the few remaining Revenants. One moment they had been there and then she had felt a sharp pull through her body that had stolen her breath and sent her to her knees in the snow. When she had looked up, they were gone.

Gone!

They hadn’t walked away as even the tracks they had made to get there had vanished.

Gone.

Their lives and existences wiped out.

Their curse broken.

And yet… she remained.

Rosita had stayed where she was. Unsure in some way as to if she was even there or if she would vanish and be sent to hell along with the others if she moved. The woods were deathly silent, herself and the trees witness to the pledge moon rising to fill the sky and the steps forming before them.

Witness to Wynonna’s battle against Bulshar.

Witness to Waverly becoming trapped upon the stairs.

Witness to Doc saving Wynonna from Bulshar’s poison and his sacrifice as he followed Waverly.

Witness to Wynonna’s anguish as the stairs vanished once more.

Rosita saw it all but said nothing as the Heir turned and left for fear of vanishing from existence or incurring the woman’s wrath.

The relationship between Heir and Revenant was volatile at best but, Rosita felt nothing but sorrow for them all.

Time passed between one step and the next, this one placing her foot within another imprint that took her to the base of where the stairs had been. The land was still silent around her, all sound muffled by the snow and maybe something more?

Fear?

Sorrow for souls lost?

The sun dipped closer to the horizon, beams of light flitting through the snow-covered branches and glistening off the blanket of white… And off a shimmering wall that lay before her.

Fear and shock held Rosita’s feet frozen in place as the stairs appeared before her close enough that she could see the pattern of frost upon the ancient stone that led up to a doorless archway.

“You should take it—”

“What?!”

Rosita jumped in shock, almost sliding on the frozen ground as she spun around to face the woman that had seemingly appeared along with the stairs. A woman that looked surprisingly warm and dapper in a three-piece suit.

“You want me to go up—” she gestured towards the stairs.

“No. You’re not worthy of that.”

At any other time, Rosita might have been offended by the strange woman’s words and her condescending smile but she was still in too much shock to do more than look at her.

“That is what you should take.”

Following the sweeping line of her gesture, Rosita found the sword Peacemaker had become next to the foot of the stairs. The flaming sword. The sword of an angel. She had been close enough to hear about it and she had been close enough to the gun it had become to know the pain that awaited touching it.

“It is quite safe right now.”

“Who are you?” Rosita demanded, ignoring the woman’s urging.

“My name is Kevin. I represent a group that looks after balance in the world.”

Rosita decided she didn’t like the all-knowing smirk on Kevin’s face any more than she liked the thought of touching the sword. She knew people like Kevin… maybe not exactly like Kevin… but she knew people that pulled you in with words, people that gave you just enough to keep you interested and asking questions without giving you a damn thing other than a migraine. And right then, it was obvious that Kevin wanted her to ask more about this ‘group’ she was a part of so she could impress her so…

“You pick it up.”

“I can’t,” Kevin admitted through gritted teeth. “We are forbidden from interfering.”

“Getting me to do it sounds a lot like interfering.”

“I’m sure upper management would agree,” Kevin sighed. “But, if you don’t a very powerful weapon will fall into wrong hands and doom us all.”

“Wynonna—”

“Wynonna is picking a different path. You are here, Rosita. The right place at the right time. You’re the right person and I need your help.”

Against her better judgement, Rosita found herself bending down. Her hand curled around the grip, her breath caught expectantly in her throat but there was no pain. Whatever had made it flame so brilliantly in Wynonna’s hand is sword and gun it was silent.

Dead?

“It will come alive once more when the Champion returns,” Kevin supplied without being asked.

“That shit is creepy, Kevin. Don’t do it again.”

“Old habits.”

“That you didn’t even need to ask what I meant was even more creepy.”

“Maybe I will explain more when we’re somewhere safe.”

“Somehow I doubt that but… lead on.”

**********

Time marched on in Purgatory and Rosita waited and watched with Kevin dogging her steps with mysterious statements that had Rosita wanting to test out if the woman was mortal or just infuriating with the point of the sword she guarded.

She stayed away from Purgatory but she saw and heard as demons and monsters entered the triangle and the borders were closed off by the returning Black Badge. And her heart broke for Nicole as she saw all she endured while guarding the homestead alone, her friends and family gone, the people she had protected as Deputy and Sheriff abandoning her.

“I should give Nicole the sword—”

“Absolutely not! If it is in her hands all will be lost!”

A harsh statement, Rosita had thought… until the Clanton’s turned up.

Rosita had never met them but, just like the details of the curse, she knew them in her bones. Their evil touch seeped into the earth and took over Purgatory and then Nicole with whispered promises of Waverly’s return. Her price; Peacemaker.

When the Earps returned, Rosita tried again to get Kevin to let her give up the burden of the sword but the infuriating woman refused once again, saying only that it was too soon. That they didn’t know the danger within.

Rosita knew that Kevin meant Nicole even before she saw the obviously possessed redhead set fire to the homestead.

“There must be something you can do! Nicole is too good to go through this!”

“She’ll make it,” Kevin assured her, cradling her face between her hands and stealing her protests with the softest of kisses. “Please, trust me, trust in me.”

“I do—”

“It will all work out, Rosita. Just a little bit longer, okay?”

“Fine. You’re still infuriating though,” Rosita added as Kevin started distracting her with more than kisses.

“I know,” Kevin chuckled.

**********

With the sword wrapped securely in a soft cloth, Rosita raced through trees and ducked beneath branches heavy with leaves. The night air was hot and heavy with the heat of summer and rendered silent with the waves of fear dogging her steps.

The silence was bad, it was terrifying, but worse still was the occasional unearthly screams that came from the pale creatures that were chasing her with a slow and dogged step that somehow still had them too close, attempting to herd her no matter how fast she went.

Gritting her teeth, Rosita dug deeper.

She had been to hell and lived there since she had been reborn and she would be damned a million times over if she would let the Clanton Reapers stop her!

Through the trees she finally saw a glow that signalled her goal; the stairs that led to Eden and the beaten-down figures of Wynonna and the others surrounded by the Clantons and Eve… who Kevin ranted long and hard about every time she was brought up.

“The victors write the history books, Rosita. Everyone thinks that it was Lilith that gave birth to all the demons when in truth it was Eve that was the first. It was Eve that gave birth to the demons while Lilith just had her name sullied.”

Kevin… her poor sweet, annoying as hell, Kevin.

Rosita saw her as she burst into the clearing, her body pale and limp, bound tightly by vines at the base of the stairs but she couldn’t stop. She had promised not to. Her goal was to get the sword back into the hands of the Champion.

“Earp!”

Unwrapping the cloth, she threw the sword towards Wynonna as the woman lifted her head. The sword arched and spun, cutting a path through the air that saw it miraculously landing in Wynonna’s outstretched hand and bursting into life with a brightness and fury that was blinding.

Rosita kept running, skidding to her knees at Kevin’s side to tug and pull at the choking vines as Wynonna went all Wynonna on the Clanton’s and Eve. Renewed by Wynonna, the others burst to life and fought back against the Reapers, giving Wynonna the room to move until finally, they had Eve and Margo on the stairs.

With a swiping motion of the sword in Wynonna’s hand, the door suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs, a glow as bright as the swords seeping around the edges that lit the night as it opened.

Eve screamed in fury and fear as a wind picked up that plucked at her borrowed hair and clothing, pulling her back towards her prison. It was nothing though compared to the wind that picked her and Margo up and flung them through the doorway as wings of pure white unfurled from Waverly’s back and beat forward once, then once more. Each beat coming with a thunderclap of energy.

The door slammed shut behind them, the night growing dark and silent once more as the Reapers vanished.

Rosita heard the heavy, determined stride of boots coming her way and knew who was coming for her but, her eyes stayed fixed on Kevin, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed easily.

No matter where her focus though, it would have been impossible not to see when the sword changed shape and became once more the same as the gun that had killed her. Instead of pointing her way though, it vanished from sight as Wynonna holstered it.

“Knew there was a reason I kept this thing,” Wynonna smiled in satisfaction as the familiar weight settled on her hip once more. “Now,” she looked down, her fingers itching to draw Peacemaker again and pull the trigger as her eyes moved from Kevin to Rosita. “I’ll probably punch your lights out later,” she growled, “but, Kevin told us what you’ve been doing for us so, for now,” she held out her hand in offering, “thank you.”

Rosita stared at the offered hand for a moment then, spurred into action by Wynonna clearing her throat impatiently, she placed her hand within hers and endured the punishing, strangle-hold of a grip that had her fingers turning white and numb.

She didn’t know what the future held for any of them or what it would take to be truly forgiven but, for the first time since her death, probably in her entire life, Rosita finally felt at peace.


End file.
